As the liner notes point out, there’s nothing inauthentic about a Swiss composer conducting a Swiss orchestra performing a ballet written by a Spaniard.
This mostly introspective, Jackie McLean led session featuring trombonist Grachan Moncur III (who contributes three of the four compositions), Roy Haynes, bassist Larry Ridley and Bobby Hutcherson, whose vibraphone add an otherworldly element to the mix, sounds more like something from an eerie “Twilight Zone” episode than what one normally expects or gets from the Blue Note franchise.
Talk about a confusing pedigree: though the jacket reproduces an "electronically reprocessed for stereo" edition of this album, the tape used is mono, thank goodness.
To those of us at a certain age and religious persuasion, there's something bizarre about Iggy and the Stooges playing Kutsher's Country Club, once one of the Borscht Belt's premiere venues. Of course Kutsher's and the Borscht Belt aren't what they used to be but Iggy and the Stooges still are!
Neil Young's 1980's country music phase wasn't appreciated by his record label at the time but the fans accepted it, certainly more than they did what came previously: dips into computer music (Trans) and Rockabilly (Everybody's Rockin'), which was digitally recorded. Somehow digital recording and Rockabilly don't go together but it took Neil a while to figure that out. And that Rockabilly record had Neil in an odd mood. Read his biography "Shakey" and it was clearly a difficult time in his life.
The late New York Times rock critic Robert Palmer once wrote a Billy Joel review that was so scathing, so mean, so nasty and couched in personal terms, that even I, a fellow Billy Joel detractor (perhaps even a "hater" back then), cringed with embarrassment.
Gary Wilson inhabits a musical and cultural space somewhere between Donald Fagan, Son of Sam and Frank Zappa. The cult favorite is a creature of the night who obsesses about girls and his hometown of Endicott, NY just outside of Binghamton. He should live in a basement apartment if in fact he doesn’t.
Analogue Productions' The Nat King Cole Story box set, originally scheduled to be released Spring of 2010 is finally here. We reviewed the box's sound quality last March based on test pressings but the actual box didn't arrive under early 2011. What's below is that review with additional information about the box and overall presentation quality—Ed.
More than enough has been written about this album for me to attempt to add anything of value to the mix. It's the best selling jazz album ever and continues to sell the way Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon does in the rock world.
Neil plays, Daniel "La-noise" manipulates. The result is a solo album—a man and his guitar— that takes on gargantuan proportions as it throbs, undulates, oozes, howls, flows, rattles and hums through a series of reminiscences, philosophical discussions, entreaties and proclamations of faith that only an older man could possibly produce and deliver with such rich and fervent authority.
Bootlegs, outtakes and unreleased material mostly interests completists, scholars and obsessive fans. Usually, the quality and significance declines with each new archival release, but not with Bob Dylan.
ORG Music is a new division of ORG, the label that's been reissuing mostly classic jazz titles over the past few years along with the heart of Nirvana's catalog. ORG Music will specialize in classic rock reissues, with an enhanced, extra track edition of this Tom Petty breakthrough album coming first.
It's easy to understand why some youngsters don't get Dylan. Everybody sings like him now but no one did back then and at first only a few could take the unadorned voice (referencing the Dylan on these old recordings, not the current croaker).
Little Feat was never an "album" band, even though they released many good records. They were low concept and high boogie. The groove was cerebral though, not the mindless "good time" endless fist pump variety mainly because of the playful and smart Lowell George. Lowell was from Baltimore,MD.
Still, some might find the new records too aggressive. I’m not in that group, but it sounds as if Mr. Grossinger mastered the original LPs, manipulating the tonal balance as he saw fit, whereas it sounds as if the GZ folks just took the files they were sent and cut. I’m just surmising that. It could be the ‘soft’ lacquer versus the ‘hard’ copper.